To a large extent it depends on what you plan on doing with your prints. If you hope to market them with multiple copies nearly identical, then it would be important to ensure a good negative that's repeatable. If, however, you view them as fine art prints with each print having some individuality, then its important to get a negative that has all the information you need to work with. Then your darkroom skills and post-visualization will come into play. Personally, I like the challenge of a high contrast negative, for example. There are so many ways to interpret it.

van Huyck Photo
"Progress is only a direction, and it's often the wrong direction"

Contrary to what Ian Grant wrote, negatives printed as contact prints on silver chloride paper will always yield a finer print than the same negative printed on enlarging paper. If anyone seriously doubts that, send me a negative to print. I will print it on silver chloride paper. Then, send me your best print of that negative and we will compare prints. After I look at yours, I will send you my print.

Cannot do this immediately as am in Iceland photographing, but think autumn. But if anyone is interested, let me know ASAP.

I started using split grade printing this year and I agree with Dan. It has improved my printing tremendously. I now start off with a base exposure and selectively burn in areas that need more. I do very little dodging anymore. I haven't tried bleaching yet, but that will probably come later this year. Like you, I'm also using 8x10, but I hope to go up to 11x14 when I can afford it. Contacts from those would be amazing.
Mike

One should be able to make 5 excellent contact prints in one hour if one knows what one is doing.

Michael A. Smith

I have taken Micheal's and Paula's workshop, and am now contact printing my 8x10 negatives exclusively on the new Lodima paper using Amidol developer. I would agree with Michael's statement; however, be aware that although the learning curve with Lodima and Amidol is relatively short, to expect to produce perfect prints in one hour might appear to be just a bit too optimistic! Good prints yes, but of course there is room for improvement that only time and "filling up the waste-basket" will provide. If you desire, please feel free to PM me for more information.

Good prints yes, but of course there is room for improvement that only time and "filling up the waste-basket" will provide. If you desire, please feel free to PM me for more information.

The whole point of his 'outflanking' method of printing is to zero in on the optimal print for the negative you're working with without 'filling up the wastebasket'. If I can't get the best possible print (which is, after all, the only acceptable print) in about 6 sheets I'm not really following the method. Perhaps I can't really decide what I want. In any case I'll put that negative aside and print it some other day.

It took me a while to learn to force myself to overshoot every time I make an adjustment in exposure time. But as Michael says, even though you're making a whole series of wrong prints, you'll use less paper in the long run compared to any other method.

I was thinking today about the outflanking method & realized it was similar to binary searching, an efficient computing algorithm. I then wondered if Michael came to this intuitively or had some kind of math background :-)

I was thinking today about the outflanking method & realized it was similar to binary searching, an efficient computing algorithm. I then wondered if Michael came to this intuitively or had some kind of math background :-)

He was a pre-law major in college who got sidetracked by photography. Hence he never went to law school. Thank God.

It took me about a year after the workshop to teach myself how to print well. Just buying the paper and some amidol clearly is not going to cut it if you want to make fine prints. I believe you need to be shown. Even then the best that a teacher can hope for is to impart whatever is necessary for the protégé to teach himself.

Last edited by c6h6o3; 11-22-2010 at 09:46 AM. Click to view previous post history.